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If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

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Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#51

The killer app for markdown would be a collaborative editor that displays the raw markdown and formatted markdown side-by-side and makes both sides editable. Tech people can use `#` and `*` on one side for formatting, product people can use normal text-editor buttons like "header1", "italics", etc.

I built this in college, but the code is lost. It was a week or so of hacking. I believe in you.

IIRC the trick was to get a pipeline for Markdown to HTML, render it into a WYSIWYG editor, then convert the HTML to an AST, and walk that to generate the markdown. I had to “format” both the markdown and html on each render (bidirectional round trip render) because parsing/gen wasn’t whitespace stable.

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#52
I've landed on a workflow that I like a lot, and have shown to several people on my team. I use Google Drive for Desktop, which maps the G:\ drive to Google Drive. From there, I use VS Code for Markdown editing.

Google Docs now supports Markdown files, so if I need to convert the Markdown file to Word or PDF, I just open it in Docs and download it in the format I need. (Pandoc also works for this, as the author mentions). Converting HTML to Markdown can also be done in Docs: copy and paste the web page text into Google Docs, and download the file as Markdown.

For mobile, I use the DriveSync app to download my notes (Markdown) folder to my phone. Then I use Obsidian to open and edit the files.

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#53
Hmmm. I see the use in this...

For me, everything swirls in an enjoyable vortex towards org-mode.

- Literate Programming, tangle/weave

- Export to DocX, PDF, HTML

- Org-Roam

- Time Management.

Several things mentioned above are day to day. I think spectacular things are often made up of collections of useful everyday things.

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#54
I adopted obsidian recently to replace notion and it’s been a refreshing change. In its basic state (no plugins), it’s just a bunch of markdown files.

Very easy to search notes and even have a dedicated folder for diary entries.

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#55
post #48

Can relate to that sentiment. What I'm still looking for is a simple solution that lets me use simple local files (eg plaintext/markdown; csv or single-page HTML would also be fine) as a backend for a web app (with login, obviously). Basically, I want to have something like a todo.txt that lives on my machine (in the folder that syncs to my cloud storage) but that I can also edit when I'm on my phone. Like using Goog…

I just access my markdown files from Obsidian through nextcloud. When I'm on my phone I just use a simple markdown editor, when I'm on my PC I use Obsidian.

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#57

The killer app for markdown would be a collaborative editor that displays the raw markdown and formatted markdown side-by-side and makes both sides editable. Tech people can use `#` and `*` on one side for formatting, product people can use normal text-editor buttons like "header1", "italics", etc.

It's not collaborative, but this is what I love about Typora[0]. Click into a styled area and the styling becomes visible. Click out, and you just see the final styling.

[0] https://typora.io/

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#58
post #48

Can relate to that sentiment. What I'm still looking for is a simple solution that lets me use simple local files (eg plaintext/markdown; csv or single-page HTML would also be fine) as a backend for a web app (with login, obviously). Basically, I want to have something like a todo.txt that lives on my machine (in the folder that syncs to my cloud storage) but that I can also edit when I'm on my phone. Like using Goog…

Why not have AI build this for you? :)

With the AI coding tools getting better each day, I'm starting to think why I would spend any time researching what's out there for what I want, instead of just using an AI coding agent to put something together in 10 mins, and forget about it.

It's getting easier and faster to have AI build something that solves my exact problem. Maybe not perfect, but OK.

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#59

I wholeheartedly agree with this post. I also keep my notes in Markdown, I also have plenty of Python scripting around them, including automatic publishing of my website. I use FSNotes today on macOS and iOS. Both apps are open source, both use well-structured .textbundle directories that separate Markdown content from JSON metadata and binary attachments. Synchronization happens through Git. It's a very powerful com…

I appreciate the mention of FSNotes (and in turn textbundle). Somehow, despite trying tons of note taking apps and formats, I don't remember ever coming across mention of this format specifically.

http://textbundle.org/

My biggest beef with org mode and all of the markdown apps I've tried is the asset management problem. For me screenshots are almost as important as the text part of the note, and are usually strongly tied to a single note. I've taken to using apple notes at work just because it "solves" that well enough, but I'd really prefer to work in markdown/plain text (except for the images).

Re: If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

#60
post #48

Can relate to that sentiment. What I'm still looking for is a simple solution that lets me use simple local files (eg plaintext/markdown; csv or single-page HTML would also be fine) as a backend for a web app (with login, obviously). Basically, I want to have something like a todo.txt that lives on my machine (in the folder that syncs to my cloud storage) but that I can also edit when I'm on my phone. Like using Goog…

I just access my markdown files from Obsidian through nextcloud. When I'm on my phone I just use a simple markdown editor, when I'm on my PC I use Obsidian.

Do you use any plug-ins for that? Obsidian tells me it only supports Obsidian Sync and iCloud out of the box.
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